[30 August 2005]
Creating A New Wave of Youth Entrepreneurs

Tyler Projects is the first business venture supported by the SMU Business Innovations Generator to receive funding under SPRING's Entrepreneurial Talent Development Fund programme. The BlueSky Evening, organised by the Action Community for Entrepreneurship, attracted some 150 entrepreneurs and SMU students who came together to network and exchange business ideas at the newly completed SMU City Campus.

Co-founded by Mr Leonard Lin, a third year SMU double degree student, NUS undergraduate Mr Ng Tianyang and NUS graduate Mr Ronnie Neo, Tyler Projects is a software firm that develops automated systems solutions, websites and computer entertainment products.

Their creations include a multi-device, multi-platform communication system named ‘Neoplanet'. While there are multi-player games for PCs, PDAs and mobile phones, there is yet to be a game in the market today that allows players on the three different platforms to play against each other. ‘Neoplanet' enables gamers to play the same game on all three platforms with other players using different devices. Players can also play a game on his mobile phone or PDA, save it, and continue playing it on his PC.

To “incubate” such budding start-ups, SMU has set up a Business Innovations Generator to help students with innovative business ideas to develop them further, think through the business process, provide grants under the SPRING Singapore funding scheme, nurture the business in its early stages, match students with experienced mentors and provide incubation space at nominal rental to house the young entrepreneurial outfits. The Generator can house up to 15 start-ups.

The Entrepreneurship Talent Development Fund (ETDF) is a grant to Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL) for investment in their students' business ventures. The fund contributes S$3 to every S$1 put in by the student business venture and a matching S$1 from the school, with the maximum grant allocation per student venture capped at S$50,000. Launched in July 2004, the scheme is managed by SPRING Singapore .

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports and Second Minister for Trade and Industry , and Chairman of ACE said at the BlueSky Evening, “By helping IHLs to seed their students' business ventures, we hope that this will encourage more students in our universities and polytechnics to start a business and enhance student learning by experience. After one year of implementation the programme is beginning to take off, with some 12 student businesses being formed. We hope to see more.”

“SMU has witnessed many bright business ideas coming from students themselves emerging from class discussions, case competitions or even over lunches and school activities. We have reviewed 18 business proposals over the last 2 years ranging from service providers, software programming companies to original retail products. Many have incubated successfully in our laboratories on campus. We hope to see such entrepreneurial spirit intensify in SMU. It has always been SMU's approach to encourage students to balance textbook-based learning with real-life practical exposure such as business ventures, business study mission, internships and case competitions,” said Professor Howard Hunter, President, Singapore Management University.

“We started Tyler Projects because we are truly passionate about making great software which breaks new ground in the software market today. The funding from SPRING Singapore has both been an important catalyst and a tremendous motivation for us to dream bigger and expand our company faster,” shared Mr Leonard Lin, co-founder of Tyler Projects.